Question: what molecules do you work with

Robert Woolfson answered on 15 Jun 2013:

I work with what are called supramolecular wheels. Supramolecular means that the molecules are quite large. To give a sense of scale:

The amino acids that make up the proteins in your body are around mass 100.
The molecules I make are around mass 2000-4000
A protein is around mass 15,000+

The wheels part is exactly what it sounds like, I make round molecules. I tend to make them out of Chromium. We do this because chromium is fairly stable but under the right conditions it can react with lots of things. It also has one unpaired electron on each atom, which is why we are really interested in it. If you imagine putting three magnets in a triangle and they can only point up or down, what way do they all point?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Triangular_frustration.svg

This is called frustration and might allow us to do all kinds of interesting things.